Sweet Deceit

by Kate Brian

  And then, finally, it was over. The interrogator turned to the group. Again the rustle. The flash. He turned around again and looked at Allison.

  “We deem your answers . . . unacceptable.”

  Ariana’s head snapped to the right. Allison’s jaw dropped, her skin as white as snow.

  “What?” Allison breathed.

  “Kindly remove this one from the premises,” the interrogator said, flicking a finger in Allison’s direction.

  Tw o masked figures swiftly dropped a black bag over Allison’s head.

  “What? No! What did I say? You can’t just drag me out of here!” Allison shouted.

  But drag her out they did. Tahira stepped out of line, her lips parted as if she was about to protest, but then Jasper grabbed her wrist and yanked her back before anyone could notice. Allison screamed and begged but didn’t struggle as they shuffled her out. The whole thing was over in about five seconds. Allison was gone, and Ariana was left standing in line with only four others, shaking from head to toe. What had Allison said that was so horrible? Her answers had seemed rote and clinicial, sure, but her lineage was impressive.

  In the distance, there was a slam. And that was the end of Allison Rothaus’s time with Stone and Grave. Mercifully, the heat lamps were flicked off. Ariana’s skin cooled instantly, but just as suddenly she began to shiver in her own sweat.

  Finally the interrogator slipped back into the crowd, disappearing among the other hoods, the other masks. Another figure emerged from the center of the group and everyone else quickly dropped down to their knees. Ariana looked frantically at Kaitlynn and Jasper. Were they supposed to bow too?

  The figure paused before them. “I am Becky Sharp,” she said. “I am the president of the APH chapter of Stone and Grave.”

  Ariana’s heart was in her throat. She knew that voice. The girl reached up, slipped her hood from her dark brown hair, and removed her mask.

  Lexa Greene stood before them, her skin ruddy from being trapped inside her mask.

  “The rest of you have passed this trial,” she said.

  Ariana’s mouth was dry. Lexa was president of Stone and Grave? Lexa was president? Sure, everyone at APH bowed down to her—figuratively at least—on a daily basis. But when Lexa had slipped and told Ariana about Stone and Grave, she’d acted as if she was scared. As if they would throw her out—or worse—if they found out she’d talked. Had it all been a lie? Had her admission really been a “slip”?

  “As your reward, the membership will now reveal themselves.” Lexa turned toward the group and raised her palms. “Brothers? Sisters? You may rise and remove your masks.”

  The group rose and Ariana felt an itch of irritation at the bold display of Lexa’s power. But it was soon drowned out as the faces were revealed. Maria, Soomie, Palmer, Rob, and Christian all stood in a clump near the center of the group. Ariana’s heart beat with excitement. She knew it. She knew all these people were in. But it was still elating to have her suspicions confirmed. The interrogator turned out to be Micah Granger—a gangly, doofy class-clown type whom Ariana never would have been intimidated by in real life.

  “And now, for your next task,” Lexa said with a wry smile.

  She removed a stack of black envelopes from the belled sleeve of her robe and stepped forward.

  “Well,” she said with a short laugh. “We won’t be needing this one.” She frisbeed one of the envelopes at the pledges’ feet, and Ariana saw the name Allison staring up at her in silver script. Tahira made a choking sound and covered her mouth. For a second Ariana stopped breathing, wondering if Lexa would react, but she simply ignored Tahira.

  “Lillian,” Lexa said, handing over an envelope.

  “Briana Leigh,” she said, meeting Ariana’s eyes with a searching stare. Like she was trying to apologize or explain or, at the very least, gauge Ariana’s reaction. Ariana took the envelope and looked past Lexa, hoping her feeling of betrayal wasn’t evident on her face.

  Lexa moved along, handing envelopes to Jasper, Tahira, and Lan don. Landon immediately started to tear his open, but Lexa stopped him with a touch of her hand to his forearm.

  “You must wait until you are alone,” she said firmly. “And you are to share these tasks with no one. Not even with your fellow taps.”

  She stepped back to the center of the line and faced them once more.

  “These tasks must be completed by midnight on Halloween if you wish to be considered for membership.”

  Right. Like anyone still here didn’t wish to be considered for membership. If Ariana didn’t want to be in Stone and Grave, she would have walked out when they made her strip down to her underwear upon arrival and then threw this awful burlap over her head.

  “All right, then,” Lexa said. She turned to her Stone and Grave brethren. “Let’s send them on their merry way, shall we?”

  The membership parted and two guys whom Ariana had seen milling around the Privilege House common rooms on occasion walked out from the back of the crowd. Their arms were laden with clothing—soaking wet, dripping piles of clothing—which they dropped at the pledges’ feet with a loud thwap. Ariana looked down and instantly recognized her pink cashmere sweater at the top of the pile, two shades darker from being soaked in water. Her stomach twisted into a million humiliated knots. The membership had submerged their clothes. So now, after over an hour of torture to her skin, she was going to have to pull her soaking wet sweater and jeans on over her chaffed, chilled, sweat-caked skin and step out into the cold autumn night for heaven knew how long of a walk back to Privilege House.

  Ariana was really starting to hate Stone and Grave. Even as she was dying to prove she was worthy of them.

  “Well?” Lexa said, raising her eyebrows as the membership laughed. “Get dressed and go! You all have a lot of work to do.”

  THE TASK

  “I can’t believe they cut Allison,” Tahira said as Ariana led the way up the long concrete steps of the tombs.

  Behind them she heard the drip-drops of water coming off her fellow taps’ clothing and the sucking sound of wet denim being pulled away from skin. She shivered violently and pulled the sleeve of her sweater past her hands to wring out some of the excess water. It sluiced down her arm all the way to her elbow, making the discomfort worse instead of better.

  “I believe they were looking for something a bit more personal,” Jasper said.

  “Like Lillian gave them something more personal?” Tahira spat. “‘I’m not at liberty to say. I can’t say,’” she mocked, lowering her voice a few octaves. “She didn’t say anything about herself, but somehow that’s acceptable? This is so effing bogus!”

  Kaitlynn gripped Ariana’s arm from behind, clearly trying to bite back her frustration, and Ariana’s toe hit the step in front of her. She tripped forward and nailed her head against something hard.

  “Ow! God! Everyone just shut up a second!” Ariana blurted. Landon snorted a laugh and Ariana closed her eyes for a second, waiting for the throbbing in her forehead to pass. Then she took a deep breath and pressed her hand against the cold metal in front of her. Groping around in the darkness, her fingers eventually found a handle.

  “Well. Let’s find out where we’ve been all this time,” she said, glancing over her shoulder before shoving the door open. Frigid air rushed in over her soaking wet body.

  “Shit it’s cold,” Landon said, jumping up and down.

  Ariana held her breath, wrapped her arms around her body, and pushed out into the night air. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. A thick fog had rolled across the grass, completely camouflaging the trunks of a line of trees so that they looked like nothing but a hovering tangle of branches floating over the earth. Ariana took a few steps away from the brick building and looked up.

  The library. They’d just come out the back door of the library. So that explained the thousands of shelves of books that surrounded Stone and Grave’s every ritual. The Tombs were actually the basement of the lib
rary—the place where old, obsolete books went to die.

  “Wow. I could have sworn we were under the arts building,” Landon said, his teeth chattering.

  “Agreed,” Jasper said. “Our kidnappers are clearly practiced in the art of misdirection. We’re practically in the center of campus.”

  “You guys, do you realize what this means?” Ariana said.

  Everyone turned to look at her, their feet disappearing beneath the fog, their breath mingling to create another cloud over their heads.

  “What?” Kaitlynn asked.

  Ariana’s eyes shone. “They let us see where the Tombs are.”

  They all glanced at one another, letting the significance of this sink in.

  “I don’t get it,” Landon said.

  Ariana laughed. “We now know where their top secret meetings are held,” she explained as she turned and started across the frostbitten grass toward the hill. “They must be serious about letting the rest of us in.”

  “She’s right,” Jasper said, his chin up as they hurried along, one big, frozen group. “We must be getting close to initiation.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Landon said. “I’d be so pissed if I was randomly booted like . . . you know,” he said, glancing guiltily at Tahira.

  “I wish I had my cell,” Tahira said. She looked up the hill toward Privilege House, where a few of the common room lights glowed through the darkness. “Allison must be freaking out.”

  “You don’t need to call her. You’ll be back inside your room in less than two minutes,” Jasper pointed out.

  “Yeah. If I don’t freeze to death first,” Tahira snapped back.

  “I can’t take this,” Landon said. His lips were rapidly turning blue, and his shivering was growing more violent. “I say we run.”

  “Run?” Ariana asked, her molars clicking together.

  “Faster you go, faster you get warm,” Landon replied. “See ya!”

  Then he turned and ran ahead, sprinting up the hill, his sneakers squishing with each step.

  “Pop boy makes a good point,” Tahira said. “Later.” And she took off after him.

  Ariana watched them go. After the emotional roller coaster of the last hour, she didn’t have it in her to run.

  “So, that was hilarious,” Kaitlynn said under her breath.

  “What?” Ariana asked as they came around the corner and onto the pathway that led to Privilege House. Jasper was lagging behind, strolling and whistling as if he didn’t have a care in the world, as if the cold and wet didn’t have any effect on him.

  “The answer you gave them,” Kaitlynn replied. “About Briana Leigh.”

  “I had to say something,” Ariana replied, glancing sidelong at Kaitlynn. “Besides, I couldn’t exactly answer how I wanted to, so I tried to think of how Briana Leigh might answer if she was actually here,” she said quietly. “You know I’d never actually tell them the truth.”

  “I know,” Kaitlynn said with a small smile. But her eyes were far away, and Ariana couldn’t help feeling that she had undone some of the progress she’d made with Kaitlynn these past few days. There was a fine line between what might make her smile and what might send her into a murderous rage.

  “So what was with all the ‘I’m not at liberty to say’ stuff?” Ariana whispered, glancing back at Jasper, who had fallen a few yards back and was still whistling a jaunty tune.

  “Well, I figured they were going to ask about my past, so I decided that if they pressed it, I would tell them my parents are top secret diplomats and that I can’t say anything more than that or I’ll risk national security,” Kaitlynn replied with a grin. “I mean, we are in DC and half the members have family in the government, so they’d probably understand.”

  “Not bad,” Ariana conceded. In fact, she was impressed by Kaitlynn’s creativity. But she also knew that national Stone and Grave had connections in every branch of government. If they really wanted to find out who Lillian Oswald’s family was, they could. And if they tried, they would definitely find out that no one even remotely related to her worked in the government. There was no one related to her anywhere—she didn’t even exist.

  Of course she couldn’t remind Kaitlynn of that. She had to be supportive of her friend. All she could do was hope that it never came to such an inquiry.

  “Hi, ladies. Balmy night we’re having, no?” Jasper said, finally falling into step with them.

  “You’re a little crazy, you know that?” Kaitlynn said to him.

  “More than a little,” he replied with a wide smile. “So, Ana . . . I was sorry to hear about your dad back there,” he said, tucking his hands under his arms. “The same thing happened to my mom.”

  “Really?” Ariana and Kaitlynn said in unison.

  Jasper blinked and lifted one shoulder as he walked. “Well, almost the same. I mean, she was shot, but she did it to herself.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly, Ariana’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Wow. I’m . . . um . . . sorry.”

  Jasper shrugged again. “So . . . you going to open that?”

  He nodded at Ariana’s envelope, which she’d all but forgotten she had clutched in her hand.

  “Now?” she said, looking down at the name Briana Leigh written across the front in silver script. “They told us to wait until we’re alone.”

  Jasper smirked. “Do you always do as you’re told?” Kaitlynn let out a short laugh and Ariana’s freezing cold face burned. If there was one thing she hated, it was being mocked to her face. But somehow, being mocked to her face in front of Kaitlynn was unbearable.

  “Not always,” she said flatly. “But in this case, yes.” With that she quickened her steps, walking purposefully ahead and leaving Kaitlynn and Jasper behind. She let the door of Privilege House slam behind her, not bothering to pay them the courtesy of holding it open, then bypassed the elevator, knowing they would only catch up with her if she waited. She jogged up the stairs and walked directly to the common bathroom at the center of her floor. No one ever used it because each dorm room had its own private bathroom. Even so, she waited until she was locked safely into the last stall before opening her envelope. She took a few deep breaths, waiting for her pulse to return to normal, then extracted the black card inside. Unfortunately, her breath left her all over again when she saw the task she’d been assigned.

  “Catch Palmer Liriano in a compromising position.” For a long moment, Ariana couldn’t move. This was her task? But why? Palmer was a member. Then an icy cold shiver of realization shot through her and she started to shake even more violently than before. Lexa. It had to be. She did suspect something was going on between Ariana and Palmer and this was her way of punishing Ariana for it. She was the president, after all. She would have the power to set the tasks. And now Ariana was totally screwed.

  Ariana cursed under her breath and slammed her palm against the stall wall. Hell Week had officially earned its name.

  BONDING TIME

  “The assignment is not to directly translate the conversations into Spanish word for word, but to really think about colloquialisms and slang,” Mr. Bernal instructed, pacing the front of the classroom. His wiry black hair stuck out in all directions and stubble peppered his double chin. Sometimes it was all Ariana could do to keep from gagging when he walked into a room. She just could not understand people who didn’t bother to take pride in their appearance. “Word-for-word translations often wind up sounding too formal, and descriptive words sometimes have a more exact version in the Spanish, so you’ll really need to dig into your vocabularies.”

  Mr. Bernal snorted some phlegm. Ariana cringed and averted her gaze, staring down at the cursor on the screen of her laptop, watching its blink, blink, blink. She sighed and waited for the teacher to say something she actually needed to type.

  “ To make it a bit easier on you, I’ve decided to have you work on this in pairs,” Mr. Bernal continued.

  Ariana automatically glanced at Lexa, who was sitting one row over,
next to the window. Lexa grinned and Ariana smiled back, but her heart felt tight in her chest. All day on Sunday Ariana had avoided Lexa, trying to figure out how exactly she was supposed to act around her now. If Lexa had set her Stone and Grave task, then clearly she knew something was going on between Ariana and Palmer. But how much did she know? Was Ariana supposed to talk to her about it or play dumb?

  The real question was, who was going to mention it first? And if Ariana did, would that make her look weak or strong in front of Lexa—the person who was supposed to be her good friend, the person who was the president of the secret society she wanted to get into more than anything?

  The class-ending tone sounded, and everyone started to gather their things. Ariana snapped her laptop closed and slipped it into her bag. Lexa lifted the strap of her messenger bag over her shoulder and fell into step with Ariana on their way out the door.

  “Want to get together later and figure out which scene we want to translate?” Lexa asked. The red turtleneck she was wearing brought out the rose color in her cheeks, and her eyes were bright and happy, like everything was perfectly normal and there was no Palmer-shaped elephant between them.

  “Sure,” Ariana replied, holding the door open for Lexa as they stepped into the bustling hallway. They sidestepped a freshman couple who were lip-locked next to the water fountain and headed for the stairs.

  “So. Aren’t you going to ask me how brunch with my parents went yesterday?” Lexa asked.

  Ariana’s heart skipped a snagged beat. She’d completely spaced on Lexa’s state-of-the-union chat with her parents.

  “Sorry. Right. How was it?” she asked.

  “Stupid,” Lexa replied, gazing straight ahead. “They were all formal with each other. Nobody talked about anything real. They only did it so that the photogs could get shots of the three of us together. My dad even told a lame joke as we came down the steps of the restaurant, just so they’d get all of us smiling. It’s all so fake.”